Quadro or FireGL? And which model?

[ICEdevil]

sooooo....Quadro or FireGL?

And which model would you reccomend for a PC that uses mainly ArchiCAD with openGL in 3D and some rendering done either with lightworks in archicad or artlantis (not that often) ?

Price range 3-400EUR max...

[Laszlo Nagy]

I would suggest that you go to a hardware review site and check out the reviews of these cards.
Get the one with the best OpenGL performance in your price range. I would not personally buy today a card with less than 512 MB of RAM.

[ICEdevil]

laszlonagy wrote:
I would suggest that you go to a hardware review site and check out the reviews of these cards.
Get the one with the best OpenGL performance in your price range. I would not personally buy today a card with less than 512 MB of RAM.

been there...done that...

i was hoping for some user feedback specifically for the archicad environment...

[Laszlo Nagy]

ArchiCAD has no specific features that would make one or another graphics card more suitable for it. If the card has good enough OpenGL performance and enough memory, then it is good for AC.

[Anonymous]

I've tried about 18 cards in the last year... anything that has 512mb ddr2 will probably do well, GPU core considered.

If you do a lot of large models, with glass and Utilities (sinks, toilets, rounded GSM objects) and tree models (we're talking a lot of polygons) then the FASTER the card, the better.

I've found that the consumer cards (I.E. cheaper) work great. AC does NOT need much to run at all... my 8400 GS in my portable laptop (1240x800) runs fine, but stutters on big models. The 8600 GT can handle anything so far. My 7900 GT/GS and GTX's can handle everything. The fire x1700 and up can do anything, as well as anything in the professional realm (but you don't need a pro card for AC!!!!).

If you can find a decent Geforce 8800 GT, you'll be very happy. Also the ATI 3850's are very cheap and run great too- but not quite as fast in 3d as the 8800's.

AC will run on my old ATI 8500 Radeon Pro's, and my 9700's no problem- and that's with 128mb !!! 10 story commercial buildings begin to move slow when orbiting though, so I turn off transparancy (make the windows opaque in your video settings for slower cards, and make the sky one color, not a BMP or image).

Again:
AC will run on consumer cards without problems- get the middle range or better (check tomshardware or something similar to see what that is). Unless you're working in Dubai, you won't notice or see the money spent on a pro card, in my experience. It's better to get two in SLI or CrossFire than 1 super expensive card, for sure.

Hope that helps.

[vistasp]

JP-Design wrote:
I've tried about 18 cards in the last year...

Whoa! You own a computer store or something? 😉

[Anonymous]

LOL!
No I just used to have a LOT of parts from various PC's I was working on fora side project I've been doing with OC'ing gear and custom silent liquid cooling system I designed for a science project some time ago. So I've tried all the hot cards and checked out modded bios' and ini files and really explored the limits of gear- and as a result, when working, I fired up each one at various points to check it in my usual apps (I used to make maps for games and render and needed the fastest gear money could buy to keep up).

I am a bit of a nerd. But are not most architects anyway?


...I mean we fiddle with pencils, paper and draw a lot, and sketch and doodle, and now
we use computers a lot
and sit around

=nerd.
LOL!

[Laszlo Nagy]

In Hungary, many architects like to think of themselves as artists, not technical persons.
Which is of course, totally understandable cause there is a lot of art and creation in architecture.

[Anonymous]

I like this term "artists" more.
Yes.
Makes me miss the days before computers a bit, when one had to know how to draw well. Ahhhh... (yes I am older than I look in my pic- lol!). How I miss the grey stains on my hands from the paper and the quiet days spent drafting in a nicely lit office.

Now all a modern architect needs is a laptop and a pair of headphones and a laser to measure a site. The art is inside, yes?

[henrypootel]

Go for a Quadro 570 or 1700, and make sure you use the certified driver.